Black Friday Online Sales Set New Record, Retail Traffic Is Wait-And-See
27.11.2022 - 00:11
/ deadline.com
The twin threats of inflation and recession loomed large over one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year. The good news is that online retailers likely had their biggest sales ever.
While brick-and-mortar stores also had foot traffic, there weren’t long lines at check outs, giving pause to analysts on just what revenue that shopping experience will generate.
Overall online sales for the day after Thanksgiving — aka “Black Friday,” when retailers are allegedly heading into the black — are expected to top $9 billion, according to Adobe, which tracks sales on retailers’ websites. Shopping could generate more than $9 billion when the final numbers come in.
The strong Black Friday followed a Thanksgiving Day online blitz of an estimated $5.29 billion up 2.9% year-over-year.
Adobe claimed Apple watches and AirPods, smart speakers and television, espresso machines and gaming consoles were popular items.
Mobile shopping also hit a record high this year, with sales from smartphones accounting for 55% of online sales on Thanksgiving Day. These sales are expected to account for 53% of total Black Friday sales, the company predicts.
Loosening Covid-19 restrictions also spurred a return to the brick-and-mortar world.
“People have been shopping today. We’d expected brisk traffic and big sales numbers. We got the brisk traffic, and we’ll soon know if that translated into positive numbers for the retailers,” Katherine Black, partner in the consumer practice of Kearney, said in emailed comments to online news site Retail Dive on Friday evening. “In Raleigh, [North Carolina] we visited a wide range of stores (Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, Bass Pro Shop) and while all of them had shopper traffic, none of them had early morning lines,